The Dirty City (2 page)

I tossed the envelope down on the floor next to him. He grunted unintelligibly, shrugged his hunched shoulders and then turned his attention back to the radio.

Michelle Masters was eighteen years of age, and the photograph her family had given to me showed her to be tall, blonde, of slender build and stunningly beautiful, yet wholesome and innocent. I located her in the back room of the drugs den, slumped on a couch – she bore very little resemblance to the girl in the photo now. Her features were emaciated, her once glowing eyes appeared sunken and dull. She was wearing a cheap, black negligee that left nothing to the imagination – she looked like a washed up whore. She was deathly pale, but thankfully breathing. She was barely conscious and I could see she was wholly incapable of standing, so I scooped her up in my arms and made for the exit. I felt vulnerable as I couldn’t easily get at my gun while carrying her.

I half expected Newt to try and pull something stupid as I walked through the sitting room, but he hadn’t moved a muscle - the envelope still lay on the floor where I’d thrown it. He’d obviously drifted off somewhere within his dope addled mind – and a huge part of me wished he’d end up permanently stuck there, never to return.

I carried the girl out into the cool, night air, dumped her rather unceremoniously into the back of my car, then set off at speed to the emergency room.

*

It was around 9.30 AM the following morning by the time I was finally able to leave the hospital. The girl had been drifting in and out of consciousness for the duration of the drive to the hospital, but as I parked up outside she began to convulse, was violently sick all over the rear interior of my car, then slumped back and promptly stopped breathing. I hurriedly carried her inside where she was quickly set upon by a posse of emergency doctors and nurses. It was touch and go for quite a while – she’d massively OD’d, I honestly thought she was a goner but eventually, she pulled through. Just. I didn’t want to give myself too much credit but I was almost certain that she’d have died that night if I hadn’t intervened when I did. I don’t know what Newt would have done, but I suspected that he wouldn’t have been above disposing of a body. I dare say she’d have surfaced a few days later, floating face down in one of the local waterways, or in a black bag at the garbage dump.

I stopped briefly to use the telephone in the hospital foyer to call Lydia, my PA. I make the distinction that Lydia was not just my secretary – it’s a cliché but all private detectives seemed to have a secretary, but secretarial work was just the beginning of her talents. Sure, she greeted my clients, typed up my case notes and made great coffee, but she also looked after all my legal and financial paperwork too. She was a rare diamond, and I certainly paid her more than your average secretary would expect to get – for someone who could keep the IRS off my back I figured it was money well spent.

“J.Jerome Private Investigations, Lydia speaking.”

“Hey, sweetheart, it’s Johnny.”

“Johnny, where the hell are you? Dr Masters has called three times already this morning looking for an update, you said you’d call him last night.”

“I found her, Lydia, but she was in a bad way. But don’t worry, she’s safe now, she’s at St Judes, call him back and let him know, alright?”

“Got it, Johnny, nice work.”

“Oh, and can you get that fella’ from East and Twenty-Third to come down town and valet the car. There was a bit of an unfortunate – accident.”

“Sounds lovely, Johnny, will do. Hey, you got a visitor, been waiting here for you to show since I opened up. You heading back this way anytime soon?”

“Yeah, should be about twenty minutes, who you got there?”

“A Mr Jameson, a lawyer – another missing person I think.”

I hated lawyers, the financial blood-sucking parasites that they are, but when a lawyer walks in as a client, well that’s different. There was simply no such thing as a poor lawyer, I had a scale of fees specifically for lawyers. It started at fifteen percent higher than what I’d charge for anyone else, and increased at twice the normal rate if the job got complicated. I had no moral or ethical dilemmas with this practice, and in reality I’d only ever stand to claw back a tiny percentage of the amount of money that various lawyers would screw out of me, so I what the hell.

“I’m on my way.”

CHAPTER 2

My commute back to the office took me via the main bridge over the river that snaked through the centre of the city. The view afforded from the bridge always seemed to make me reminisce.

The city of Santa Justina is something of a curiosity. From its foundation as a small port with a trading outpost in the early eighteen hundreds, over the following century, apart from minor road and rail links, very little changed. Its small community grew at a snail’s pace – but then World War II happened and things went crazy. In came massive investment, the natural harbour was utilised as a fully fledged dock for export and import, factories and industrial infrastructure sprang up all over on the previously empty and undeveloped land. Residential blocks were rapidly erected to house the inevitable influx of workers and an urban sprawl began.

Shortly after the war, amongst many others, I arrived in town. Back then things were very different, it was like the model town – the American dream. I don’t know exactly when it changed - a lot of people blamed the change in the drinking laws. Prohibition was long over but Santa Justina was a dry city up until 1950. Boy, did we ever make up for it after, though! Then things got a little complicated, it seemed that as the city grew at an ever increasing rate, it was somehow mutating. There was always crime, but now it became organised and on a grander scale. The night opened up to all manner of vices; late night bars, gambling dens, strip joints, prostitution. Santa Justina had become a city of sin, a dirty city.

I moved there to become a cop, and who knows, had things been different I might have been a cop for a lot longer. One day I was a fine, upstanding officer of the law, I made one mistake and trusted someone I shouldn’t have - the next day I was an ex cop with a dirty reputation. There weren’t too many career paths open to someone under those circumstances, disgraced cops had a habit of either turning their back on the law altogether and adopting a life of crime, or they became private detectives. I chose the latter.

So, Santa Justina was a dirty city, but this worked to my advantage. There’s a lot of good business in a dirty city for a private detective.

*

My office was right in the centre of town, I’d been lucky to get the place – it was a first floor premises above a busy convenience store, accessed through a discreet side door and up a narrow stairwell.

‘J.Jerome Private Investigations Ltd’ emblazoned the outer office door in as impressive and dynamic a font as I could afford the sign writer to produce. The door gave way to a modest reception and waiting area – this was Lydia’s domain. She was seated at her sizable desk, the usual array of paperwork strategically placed in front of her. Hell, I didn’t even know what most of it was these days, but Lydia did, thank God. Those bits of paper, receipts, bills, licences - to me they were like the by-product of my profession, the annoying detritus that ended up clinging to me at the end of a working day. When a case was over I would dust them off me and they’d fall chaotically onto Lydia’s desk, and she would gather it all up and make sense of it all.

Lydia was a well built woman, gracefully negotiating her forties, about five-five, pretty - with feminine charm, but a good head for figures and a very sharp mind. She’d never married, she always told me she’d never found a guy who measured up to her expectations. I could understand that, she didn’t suffer fools and she was never going to be some guys obedient housewife. Considering this was a largely pre-feminist era I guess Lydia was well ahead of her time.

“Well it’s about time, he’s in your office, on his fourth cup of coffee.”

Lydia didn’t even look up, she was ensconced in a complicated assortment of papers and files.

“Thanks, Sweetheart. And the car-.”

“He’ll be over at 11.30, and he says if its blood he’ll charge you double.”

“He’s got me by the balls on this one, it ain’t blood but I sure as hell ain’t touching the stuff – but if he asks for more than fifty dollars, tell him he can go take a hike.”

I hastily hung up my hat and coat on the stand in the waiting room and headed into my office.

“Mr Jameson, Johnny Jerome, apologies for keeping you waiting, it’s been a crazy morning.”

Richard Jameson rose to meet me as I entered and offered an outstretched hand. I took it, firmly – but cautiously, that’s the extent to which I don’t trust lawyers - they’ve always got something nasty up their sleeve.

“Mr Jerome, glad to make your acquaintance. Apologies for appearing on your doorstep unannounced, but I require your assistance in an urgent and delicate personal matter.”

I politely ushered him back into his seat, then strode around to the other side of my oak desk.

“Well, you better tell me all about it?”

“Word is that you know a bit about the, how shall I put it? The ‘darker’ aspects of this city.”

“You could say that.”

“My son, Anton. I sent him to a top college last summer, away from here. It wasn’t cheap but I thought it was best. He flunked out after the first semester – so I dragged his sorry backside back here. I fixed him up with some part time work, a junior clerk role at my legal practice, just something to get him re-focused, show him what work really was and let him earn some money. I was hoping he’d come around to trying college again the following year, write this year off as a false start.”

I could appreciate the sentiment, what parent wouldn’t want the best for their kid? But most people I knew didn’t earn in five years what it cost to put someone through a top college for a single year, and that just made me dislike Jameson all the more.

“But things didn’t go to plan?”

I offered Jameson a cigarette from a box on my table – I never touch the filthy things, I guess I was ahead of my time in that respect, but pretty much all my clients smoked, it was kind of expected. Jameson took one and lit up right away. He exhaled deeply, as if composing himself for the finale of the story. This was the bit where it all went bad.

“At first it was fine, I thought he was back on track. But he’s a young lad, impressionable, and he suddenly had his own money in his back pocket. And in this city, well, you know how it is?”

“I’ve an idea, but why don’t you tell me how it is, exactly?”

“He fell in with some –
unsavoury
sorts. I didn’t want to discourage the boy from having friends, a social life. I’m not an ogre. Perhaps I should have been, I let him go astray. Before I knew it he was into something over his head.”

“And what would that be?”

I could tell Jameson had trouble admitting it to himself, let alone saying it out loud. He swallowed hard, took another long puff of his cigarette then came out with it.

“Drugs, Mr Jerome. First it was just liqueur, I wasn’t happy, I disciplined him severely, but I put it down to youthful hijinks. But then it got more serious. I began to suspect he was dabbling with marijuana – he’d become lethargic, vague. He started turning up late to work, then skipping shifts feigning illness. Then he stopped bothering to turn up at all. I took him to task, threatened him with packing him off to a military boarding school. He promised me things would improve, that he’d sort himself out. Next day he didn’t show up for work again. I got home and found him gone, along with $250 in cash from the safe in my study. That was four weeks ago, there’s been no trace of him since.”

“And you’ve been to the police?”

“Yes, for all the good it’s done.”

I had to agree with him there, Santa Justina’s finest couldn’t find their own butt cheeks with both hands and map. They wouldn’t have had a clue where to find this kid.

“And that’s where you come in, Mr Jerome. I need him found. Fast. I lost his poor, departed mother, I can’t lose him as well.”

I almost felt a little bit for the guy. Imagine that, me feeling sympathy for a lawyer. Almost. But not that much, let’s be honest.

“Now then, Mr Jameson, lets remain positive here. I’ve just closed a case this morning so my schedule is open, I can start work on this right away. But, this kind of investigation often requires going to some fairly shady places – dangerous places. And dangerous means expensive.”

“Name your price, Mr Jerome, find Anton and you shall have it.”

“I’m going to quote you a flat rate here, $25 a day, plus an additional $2,000 when I find him.”

“Not a problem,” he handed me a hefty envelope, “in here you’ll find $500, let’s call it an incentive, shall we?”

Hot damn! Had a lawyer ever handed over their cash as easily as this in the history of the universe?

“I’m going to need a recent photograph of Anton.”

“Here you are, Mr Jerome. I trust this will be okay, it was taken about three months back?”

And just when I thought the day couldn’t get any better, here was the
coup de grace!

“That’s Anton?”

Sweet Jesus, I couldn’t believe it – the youth starring back at me in the photo was none other than the poor, unfortunate lad I’d seen at the drugs den the previous night. This had the potential to be the fastest money I’d ever made, although I was almost sad that it might be over so quick, what with the $25 a day fee and all. But I had to disguise my delight pretty well, lest I had to also admit to Jameson that whilst I had seen his son less than 24 hours ago, let’s just say he wasn’t at his best. Hell, for all I knew the kid could be lying dead in that shit-hole kitchen right now.